me, places already sown are planted with something else, and there
is confusion out of doors and despair in my heart. But he was to have
married the cook, and the cook saw a ghost and immediately left, and he
is going after her as soon as he can, and meanwhile is wasting visibly
away. What she saw was doors that are locked opening with a great
clatter all by themselves on the hingeside, and then somebody invisible
cursed at her. These phenomena now go by the name of "the ghost." She
asked to be allowed to leave at once, as she had never been in a place
where there was a ghost before. I suggested that she should try and get
used to it; but she thought it would be wasting time, and she looked so
ill that I let her go, and the garden has to suffer. I don't know why
it should be given to cooks to see such interesting things and withheld
from me, but I have had two others since she left, and they both have
seen the ghost. Minora grows very silent as bed-time approaches, and
relents towards Irais and myself; and, after having shown us all day how
little she approves us, when the bedroom candles are brought she quite
begins to cling. She has once or twice anxiously inquired whether Irais
is sure she does not object to sleeping alone.

"If you are at all nervous, I will come and keep you company," she said;
"I don't mind at all, I assure you."

But Irais is not to be taken in by such simple wiles, and has told me
she would rather sleep with fifty ghosts than with one Minora.

Since Miss Jones was so unexpectedly called away to her parent's bedside
I have seen a good deal of the babies; and it is so nice without a
governess that I would put off engaging another for a year or two, if it
were not that I should in so doing come within the reach of the arm of
the law, which is what every German spends his life in trying to avoid.
The April baby will be six next month, and, after her sixth birthday
is passed, we are liable at any moment to receive a visit from a school
inspector, who will inquire curiously into the state of her education,
and, if it is not up to the required standard, all sorts of fearful
things might happen to the guilty parents, probably beginning with
fines, and going on crescendo to dungeons if, owing to gaps between
governesses and difficulties in finding the right one, we persisted in
our evil courses. Shades of the prison-house begin to close here upon
the growing boy, and prisons compass the Teuton about on